I knew some people had better memories than others – for instance, my sister can recall a lot more of our childhood than I can, and I have seen documentaries of people who can remember every day of their lives and I know that ‘most’ people do not work that way, but I thought that we could all just remember different things from our past, not realizing that I was actually worse at it than most.įor me, I have a blank slate but ‘bumps in the road’ for big traumatic events or really weird events that got ‘stuck’ there. I had no idea that I was different in this way. You can remember events have happened but not recall what it was like to be there. 2.) SDAM is the lifelong inability to vividly recollect or re-experience personal past events from a first-person perspective. Apparently a lot of people who have Aphantasia, also have SDAM, so I did an online survey and it was ‘me’. It was there that I also found out about SDAM. It wasn’t until decades later that I found there was a name for people who can’t visualize, and so I joined a couple of Aphantasia groups on Facebook: I called them out on it when I was attending a hypnosis course and found out then and there that they could all ‘see’ these things – that “I” was the one who was ‘faking it’ lol. Meditation and hypnosis used to irritate me because I thought everyone was just ‘faking’ that they could ‘walk down a path, imagine a beach, open the door, visualize the car of your dreams’, etc. My mind’s eye is blank (‘1’ on the test above) – has always been blank (except some dreams) and I always thought it was like that for EVERYONE. Simple Aphantasia test – visulize a red star, what do you see in your mind’s eye? If you see complete darkness, the void as I like to call it, then you have Aphantasia. If you can see anything at all, even dark shapes, you do not have Aphantasia. Try to imagine and “visualize” a red star in your head in your mind’s eye. I relate to the obsession for knowledge and facts and truth, and decided to do an online test just to see what it said.īefore I relate my experiences, it’s probably a good idea to give a summary of what Aphantasia and SDAM is: 1.) Aphantasia is the inability to visualize. And someone commented on their post that they may be on the Autism spectrum. You see I recently found out I have SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) after discovering I have Aphantasia, and in the SDAM group, someone mentioned their childhood experience of constantly asking questions to the point where it irritated others, and an obsession with reading dictionaries, encyclopaedias and any available reference materials. I do have a ‘stigma’ about it (as in, I know I’m weird, but have always thought of myself as highly intellectual, and seeing myself as having a mental disorder of any type is not exactly good for the ego), but at the same time, I’m curious – maybe something that explains why I’m ‘so different’ than everyone else, and if I can understand it, it will benefit me via confirmation as to why I am the way that I am, finding others who I can relate to, and perhaps helping me understand others more, but more-so to understand ‘myself’. I just did an online-test to see where I am on the Autism spectrum and I’m in the ‘most likely’ category, which is not a diagnosis but gives me something to work with to understand myself better.
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